Quoting dlramp4life (Thread starter):I have a background working with video, audio, and lighting systems mostly in high school and some college. Anybody other A/V techies on a.net?

Though I was never the "official" AV guy in school, delivering and setting up stuff, I ended up as the AV geek way back in my school years. I ran the film projectors (yes, we those when I was in school) in every class I had, the teacher always knew I could "make it go". And moved into the video and electronic era without a hitch.

And later in my work places I am now the guy they turn to to "make things work", from getting screens to come down out of the ceiling, to getting the right presentation to load onto the right screen and stop the Outlook reminders from popping up in the corner of the presentation.... yeah, I am still stuck with it. Sigh....

Odd tidbit to relate with the recent anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. We had no normal TV at work to see what the heck was going on during the day. So I dragged out one of our video presentation setups and stripped a wire, ran into the ceiling, and then stuffed it into the "cable" port to get a signal. It wasn't a great picture but it kept people able to be informed and see what was going on on that very sad day. My boss (and others) later personally thanked me for setting it up.

Tugg

I don’t know that I am unafraid to be myself, but it is hard to be somebody else. -W. Shatner

I would probably have been one if such a thing existed here. Like tugger I was/am the go to guy to make things work, but aside from that my high school didn't have a lab and it's not common for pupils to stay at school for other things than studying. The only thing "geeky" I could do with my friends was playing tarot during the morning, lunch and afternoon breaks.

New Technology is the name we give to stuff that doesn't work yet. Douglas Adams

In high school I was part of the team of students from the electronics education classes that scheduled and relocated AV equipment from room to room in the school.

Our high school building was built back around 1910 and unlike today nothing was permanently installed in the rooms.

The teacher would submit a request for a 16mm projector (no VCR's back then!), reel to reel tape unit (not even cassettes were out yet) or an overhead projector. We'd make sure that the units were in the classroom at the beginning of the class and removed them at the end of the class. And of course the tech part, if anything broke down we'd repair it too. Most of the time it was bulbs, belts, general cleaning, etc.

And the screens would have to be delivered with the equipment as well. But remember this was 40 something years ago.

I started out in my middle school theatre and now I'm 80% of the way through getting all my hours to become a full IATSE member. I've done LX, audio, video and carp for numerous Cirque du Soliel shows, rock shows like Ozzy, The Killers, Nine Inch Nails, as well as local opera and traveling Broadway shows.

In secondary school I was often asked to do the pyrotechnics for school theatre performances. Back then I had the reputation of being a chemistry and physics geek (which also got me the permission to use the school chemistry and physics labs for my own experiments) and I was trusted by the chemistry teachers of having enough knowledge as not to blow the school up or to set it on fire.